KARACHI, April 18: Minister for Commerce Humayaun Akhtar Khan on Tuesday stressed the need for reviving the National Accidental Death Insurance Scheme and ensuring better returns to the policyholders of the State Life Insurance Corporation (SLIC).

He also asked the SLIC to undertake state-of-the-art real state projects in mega cities like Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad in order to generate optimum revenue and take full advantage of the boom in real estate.

During his visit to the SLIC principal office, where its chairman Kamal Afsar gave a corporate presentation on the SLIC performance, the minister directed that the corporation should continue to provide financial protection to the existing and the prospective policyholders by introducing friendly life assurance products.

Earlier, Kamal Afsar in his presentation on SLIC said that the corporation planned to expand its real estate investments through SPVs (Modarabah), REIT’s for securitization of rental income, besides, forming SLIC’s Asset Management Company with foreign collaboration to manage its fund, and secure investments on modern lines.

He further said that the State Life also aims to launch new products such as investment linked policies, village insurance plans for rural areas, Takaful insurance and pension funds.

Kamal Afsar said that in order to provide relief to the general public the SLIC would construct parking lots in Karachi and would also build six major hotels in mega cities. He said that the corporation had secured new business worth Rs2.66 billion in financial year 2005 by providing financial protection to 2,53,770 new policyholders and their families all over the country, thus showing an increase of 20.87 per cent in business done in that period.

The SLIC chairman said that the State Life’s renewed premium stood at Rs7.18 billion, while the second and third year persistency stood at 82.19 per cent and 89.43 per cent, respectively. He said that the SLIC had secured Rs2.46 billion by marketing 183 new groups while achieving 74 per cent and 82 per cent as second and third year business persistency in group and pension portfolio.

The SLIC chief informed the minister that corporation’s new business in the Gulf zone stood at Rs141 million in 2005. He said that the SLIC had paid Rs22,524,475 on account of 126 death claims of the policyholders and their families who had lost their lives in October 8 earthquake.

He said that the corporation had shown robust business performance in the first quarter of 2006 by securing Rs633 million worth new business (first year premium), while showing an increase of 19.04 per cent.